On Sun, 30 Jan 2005, Russell McMahon wrote:

>>> From a large well-known software company:
>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/28/flying_car_all_at_sea/
>
> Notice how people always sling off at Microsoft without having done
> "due diligence" on what's involved. Obviously Microsoft have written
> this software for a certain class of customer and people with inferior
> equipment are trying to put it to uses not intended. What the customer

?! The 'trip' shown in the article is land to land. There was another on 
slashdot on the same theme where the start and end were both in Norway 
or Denmark and the program suggested going via England (crossing the 
North Sea *twice*)!! Notice that the trip is indicated on the 'road' 
formed by the main shipping lane in the area (the dashed dark blue line 
in the map) (the program probably interpolated the trip end points onto 
the closest points on the road grid known to itself - and the 'beta 
testers' get to find out that there are no sanity checks built in, such 
as determining the fact that you cannot 'drive onto' a shipping lane at 
any point excepting at its ports (and assuming there is a ship there, at 
the *right* time, i.e. not in 2 weeks waiting time - what else is new 
about quality control ? - oh, wait, you get what you paid for, access to 
that site is free).

I also know that it is very hard to persuade a route computer to agree 
with what you are doing if you get off the known route grid.

I wonder what crazy route it would suggest for a London-Auckland trip (I 
have a hunch about the shortest possible great circle route over water 
going through the South Pole or crossing the Andes at their highest 
point or something like that).

Peter
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